10 Galatians 5:13-26 Spirit vs. Flesh

Speaker: This is Wednesday in the Word, a women's ministry at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Charlottesville, Virginia. Today is November 9, 2011. Our passage is Galatians chapter 5, verses 13 through 26, and our teacher is Terry Weiser. For more talks in this series, please visit our website, which is www.wednesdayintheword.com. Speaker 1: Good morning. I you know, I do, I look out and I'm I'm amazed at how many of you are here this morning because I know how busy life is beginning to get right now. And so I just want to say thank you that you made the time to be here this morning. And here's what I want you to know. I hope that you will be encouraged this morning because I do believe that this section of Scripture where we find ourselves right now can be of enormous encouragement in the midst of hectic schedules and in the midst of our confusing lives at times, and in the midst of broken relationships, and in the midst of exhaustion, and in the mix in the and in the midst of all the things that are going on in our lives. And so what I want to remind you right at the beginning of our time together is that what we are studying is God's word. And that it is written that we might know how to walk in this broken world that we live in and in our lives that confuse us at times, and that we can live with hope and joy and thanksgiving and freedom all wrapped up in the love of Jesus. So I do hope that that will be what happens to us today, that we will leave leave here if I learn to talk, that we will leave here and um that we will be blessed by God being with us. Um this morning, hello, I'm gonna read from my favorite book. This is called the Jesus Storybook Bible, and I always read from it. And the reason I'm reading from this this morning is that um the title of the section I'm going to read is God Sends Help. And what I think the author um does with um this, uh what she talks about here about the Holy Spirit, is that she gives us just this sweet, beautiful, broad picture of the Holy Spirit's work. And she does it so that she shows us the joy that we can find in this. So let me begin by reading this. Jesus' friends and helpers huddled together in a stuffy upstairs room, and even though it was sunny outside, the shutters were closed and the door was locked. Wait in Jerusalem, Jesus had told them. I'm going to send you a special present. God's power is going to come to you. God's Holy Spirit is coming. So here they were, waiting. Well, actually, mostly what they were doing was just being scared and hiding. You really can't blame them. Their best friend had left, and the important people and leaders of their area were after them, and Jesus had given them a job and they didn't even know how to do it. And as they waited, they were praying and they were remembering. They were remembering how from the very beginning God had been working out his secret rescue plan. Suddenly, a strong wind filled the little room, whistling through the walls, rustling the straw on the floor, and there on everyone's heads, shining in the gloom were flickering flames, fire that didn't hurt or burn, and something more. Inside, in their hearts they felt a strange heat, almost as if all the coldness and hardness were melting away, as if their broken hearts were mending. And God was giving them brand new hearts, hearts that could work properly. How it happened they didn't know, but they knew God's power had struck their hearts ablaze and Jesus himself was coming to live inside them. They had seen Jesus go away, but now he was closer than he had ever been. He was inside their hearts. And this time nothing could ever separate them. Jesus would always be with them, with them, loving them, whispering the promise that would get rid of the poison and the terrible lie and the sickness in their hearts, God's wonderful promise to them. You are my child, and I love you. Make your home in me as I make my home in you, Jesus had said. Could it be heaven was coming into their hearts? They threw open the shutters and sunlight flooded their room as love had flooded their hearts, and the little room was filled with happy noises, dancing feet, singing and laughing. They unlocked the door and they surged out into the streets as if they had never been afraid. Peter spoke in a loud voice so everyone could hear. Jesus died for you, he said, because he loves you, but God made him alive again and he has rescued you. People stopped and they began to listen, and the words sank down deep into their hearts and worked like a medicine that makes you well, like the antidote to a deadly poison, like a kiss that wakes you from a deep sleep. Stop running away from God, Peter said. Run to him instead, so he can love you, so he can make you free. And Peter told them the wonderful story of God's love, God's never stopping, never giving up, unbreaking, always and forever love, how Jesus had come and all that had happened. Well, I don't know about you, but what goes on in my life sometimes is that I find I'm most like those believers who were in the upper room with the doors locked and the shutters shut, and I'm feeling lonely and inadequate and scared and tired, and I'm wondering what's going on in my life. I live at times as if I don't have this wonderful gift in my heart that Jesus gave us. I live at times as if that amazing gift is not there, mending my brokenness and speaking God's love into my heart. Any of you ever feel that way? Yeah, I think we all do. That we just walk through life and that Jesus seems more like an idea rather than a reality. And so that's what we're going to talk about this morning, and I want you to be encouraged because there is a promise. If you are a Christian, then the Holy Spirit is in your heart. If you belong to Jesus, you have his great gift. He promised that when he went away, he would not leave us as orphans. He promised that he would send us another helper. That is the good news. That is amazing news. However, I need to also tell you that as you walk by the Spirit, you're going to be involved in a war. And Peter tells, I mean, and Paul tells us that even in the midst of that war, we can be free in the gospel because Jesus really does love us that much. And he really is dwelling in our hearts. That's the promise we have before us this morning. Let me pray for you. Father, um, how do we thank you that you came to dwell inside us? And how do we explain that we sometimes live as if you aren't there, as if the Holy Spirit isn't really in our hearts and the power isn't working in us. Lord, forgive us for that. Help us to understand this morning as we read through Paul's letter what it means that the Holy Spirit dwells in us. Lord, help us to become more like Jesus. Help us to be free. Help us to glorify your name. And we pray these things in Christ's name. Amen. Okay, for the first few minutes, I just want to give a brief summary of what we talked about last week. Last week we began our study of chapters five and six, and we said that these chapters answer the question: because the gospel is true, how shall we then live? What difference does the gospel make in our lives? And right away, Paul gave us a truth that he is going to use to take us to the end of our study together. And this is what Paul said in the very first verse of chapter 5. For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. You are free in Christ. Don't give up the ground that Jesus has won for you. Stand firm in your freedom. Paul, in our study last week, helped us to see that there are times that there are two forms of slavery. One is uncircumcision, one is circumcision, and both of those things, although they are at opposite ends of the spectrum of the way we would live life, that they both lead to slavery. Trying to find your life in your own works to make Jesus love you, that's one way of living in slavery, and trying to find your life by living without any boundaries at all, is also another kind of slavery. In either case, you are without the benefit of Jesus' saving grace, and you are still living a life that enslaves you now and it will destroy you in the end. And you are living without the benefits of God's saving grace. Freedom comes only in Jesus Christ. And Paul said one more thing. He said freedom only comes in Christ, but he also said that this freedom in Christ has a boundary to it. It has something that is essential, it has something that matters, it has something that is so important for us to realize, and that is it is faith working itself out through love. Seeing Jesus as the lover and liberator of our souls should fill us with love. And grasping the gospel anew every day is something that we need to do because as we understand all that Jesus has done for us, our faith awakens and love begins to happen in our hearts. It really does. And we went through and and and we saw how Christ set us free. And we talked about that and we said, it is so amazing what Christ has done for us. We said that He has set us free from fear, He has set us free from sin. He has set us free from guilt. He has set us free from the fear of God's wrath. He has set us free from the fear of death. And we said that in all of these things, Christ has paid it all. We have done nothing. He did it all. It is finished. We are not in slavery anymore. We are now free in love. Because love begets love, it is that kind of two-sided love that we love because he first loved us. And when we see through the eyes of faith Jesus dying for us, we will all be changed. Putting our faith in him changes everything. And here's what happens. When we become believers, the Holy Spirit comes and he pours the love of Jesus out in our hearts. So much of last week, um of the first part of last week, we focused on the danger that was going on in the churches in Galatia. And that that they were facing this because there were those who were coming in and trying to take away their freedom in Christ and trying to tell them Christ was not enough and they needed circumcision. And what they were do what was happening is Paul wanted them to understand the dire situation that that they were being um tempted to fall into. He was warning them of that. And as he did that, he spoke very passionately that they could not submit again to a yoke of slavery. But here's what I I want to make a distinction that I don't think I made last week, and I do want to make sure we understand it. What Paul was talking about there was about an issue of justification. It was about salvation itself. It was about the very heart of the gospel. That was the first part of what we talked about last week. In the second half of last week, we saw Paul completely change directions and he began to speak to the true believers in the churches, and he began to speak to them about the glories of life in Christ and the freedom we have in him. He talked about how the gospel changes us and works itself out through love. And that was about sanctification, becoming like Christ. So for the rest of what we're going to be talking about, we're not going to be talking about justification. We're talking about sanctification, about our freedom in Christ by the Spirit dwelling in us. And Paul will also tell us that as believers, we can still fall at times into fleshly living, we can still fall at times into living by the law, falling into legalism. But when we do that, we're still talking about sanctification, not about justification. Okay, that's where we begin today. Here's our outline for this morning. The first thing we're going to look at this morning is we are we are going to look at the fact that we are called to freedom in the gospel, but that freedom has beautiful boundaries. The second thing we're going to talk about is that the spirit living brings war. And then we're going to look about at two different things, living in the flesh and living in the spirit. Okay, before we get to our actual text, I want to give you a couple of things. I want to give you first a picture that I think will help you as we go through this to follow Paul's argument. Imagine that the Christian life is this narrow bridge, and um and that bridge is over two polluted streams. And these these polluted streams are flesh and legalism. And that the Christian life is that our our purpose is to go over that bridge without falling into those streams. Okay, so keep that picture before you. I I think that will help. You see, if we fall into those streams, what happens is that it will diminish our joy in the gospel, it will um stunt our freedom, and it will keep us from loving others. Because when we fall into those things, we become self-focused. So I think that may help as we go along this morning. The other thing that I do want to say is we're going to be talking this morning a lot about love. Now we all know what love is, we think we do, but I think sometimes it helps just to have a definition. And so um, I know I'm amazing that I can give a definition of love. And in just one or two sentences, this is going to be great. Okay, so here it is. Um this is what love is, according to what we're going to be talking about today. Love is the laying down of our lives for others. It is sacrificial, selfless giving. And we get this from um this passage. By this we know the love of Jesus, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for others. Okay, so when we're talking about love this morning, that's what we're going to be talking about. It is this giving of ourselves to others. We're going to be using that same definition next week also as we talk more about this. The idea is this kind of love is costly, but it's beautiful. Okay. All right, I'm going to read our passage for this morning if you have your Bibles with you, but we're going to begin in verse 13. For you were called to freedom, brothers, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another. But I say, walk by the spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the spirit, and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgy, and things like this. I warn you as I warn you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law, and those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the flesh, let us also I oh boy, if we live by the spirit, let us also walk by the spirit. Okay. Here in verse 13, where we're going to begin, it says, For you were called to freedom, brothers, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. What Paul is doing here is he is driving home the idea that life in the gospel is a life of freedom. He keeps driving that home. He wants us to understand that. And yet Paul gives a warning here. He says, Do not use your freedom in the gospel as an opportunity for the flesh. Don't fall into that polluted stream of the flesh. In order to grasp what Paul is talking about, I'm going to give you the definition of two words. The first word, and we're going to be talking about this all through this morning, is the word flesh, and that comes from the Greek word sarx. And here is what one comment how one commentator defined this, and I think it's real helpful. He says, the flesh means something more than the body. It is the part of me that does not want what God wants. It wants what I want. It's my corrupt human nature in all of its weakness and all of its depravity. So we're going to be talking about flesh a lot today, so that's kind of the definition. It's more than our body. It's just that part of me that wants what I want. It's about me. Okay. The second word is is the word opportunity, and I can't pronounce the the um Greek word that it is, but it comes from a military term, and that word opportunity means base of operation. So here's what Paul is telling us. He says, do not use your precious freedom in Jesus Christ as an opportunity to live in the flesh. That's what he's telling us right away. Don't fall back into slavery because that is what living in the flesh is. Freedom without form is slavery. And Paul is saying that this form of freedom in the gospel, that there is a form of freedom in the gospel, and it's just like what he talked about last week, that that form of freedom in the gospel is love. But you can't use your freedom in the gospel to live just in the flesh. You can't live corruptly. No, freedom in the gospel is living a life of love. That's what Paul is saying. What makes freedom free is love. What makes freedom free is love. We can't be free without love. Okay, do you get that? Paul, what Paul is telling us is we can't be free without love. So what then what does that begin to to look like? That's what the gospel is all about. It's about loving the Trinity. Think about it. The gospel is about loving the Trinity. It's about God so loving the world that he sent his only Son. It's about Jesus loving us so much that he gave up heaven and came to earth and took on flesh, and he lived the life we should have lived, and he died the death we should have died. And then he went to heaven, and he, out of love, sent his Holy Spirit to dwell in our hearts and to come into our hearts and pour out love in our hearts that then we might live lives of love. Love is in the blood of our veins as Christians. You have to see that. That's what our life is about. It is about a self giving. It is about living our lives for others. It's about loving Jesus. It's about Him loving us. That's what the gospel is. That's what we need to understand. And so what we want to say is don't fall off the bridge into that polluted water car. Called legalism and don't fall off the bridge into that polluted water called license. No, stay on the bridge and through love serve one another. That's what Paul is telling us. And there's more to this amazing statement that through love we serve one another. Don't use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love, serve one another. What Paul is actually saying, the word serve there is actually the word for slave. Okay. Paul's telling us, okay, we're free, and now he's telling us we're a slave. What he's saying is there is a kind of bondage that is beautiful. And it's beautiful to the Lord, and it's the bondage of love. It really isn't bondage at all, but it just takes us a long time to realize that. Because loving someone is really, really, really hard. Okay. We are not to use other people as our slaves to our fleshly desires. No, instead, we're to be in bondage of love to them. Then Paul goes on and he says, the whole law is fulfilled in one word. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. What Paul is simply saying here is that all the law finds its fullest utterance in this, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. So here is the first thing, our first point that we need to understand as the this new life in freedom has beautiful boundaries, and it is love. And we can add nothing to Christ's work but belonging to Christ has set us free, and our freedom is enfolded in his love, and it begins to pour out of us toward other people. Okay. Alright, the second thing that Paul wants us to understand and to be aware of is that freedom living brings war. Because the Spirit now lives in us and wars against the flesh. Look at verses 16 and 17. Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the spirit, and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh. For these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want. You know what Paul is saying? He's saying, if there isn't a war going on in your heart, you don't have the spirit. He's saying, when the spirit lives in our hearts, then there is going to be war. Within our hearts, and we know this, there are two natures. There is the old fleshly nature that we got when we were born. I mean, it's been with us forever. But then there is this other nature that came to us when we had rebirth in Christ. And these two natures are at war. Here's the good news about that. The old nature has a terminal illness and cannot survive in the end. The Holy Spirit will win this war, but the old nature does not die easily. And the Spirit's resistance, what we feel going on in our heart, is to keep us from doing the things that we otherwise would do. The old spirit has been with us since the beginning. We naturally have these yearnings in our hearts to follow that old nature. It's what seems most natural to us. And so the Holy Spirit has come into our hearts, and the Holy Spirit is going to war, and the Holy Spirit is going to fight to keep us from doing those things we would naturally do. Now, I don't know about you, but I thought I'd give you an example. You're learning so much about me, but I when I I have I feel this war going on in my heart at times. And one issue is gossip. Okay? Someone hurts me. I want to tell someone else about it. I do. And I feel this this I I feel the war going on. I feel the war going on. And it's a tie and I have to talk to myself because what is gossip? It's not loving someone else, is it? It's feeding my own flesh. If I want to gossip, what I am trying to do is love myself and not love someone else. I'm trying to tear someone else down to make myself feel good. And so I have to battle that desire. I have to battle that desire. We're going to talk about it in a minute, but it we're supposed to crucify that desire. We're supposed to put that desire on the cross. But that desire goes on. Sometimes, sometimes I lose that war. I lose that battle and I fall into the polluted stream. That's how strong our flesh is against us. And Paul is telling us, I want you to be aware of that. I want you to be aware of this war. I want you to fight with the Holy Spirit as you go through it. As he brings these things to your heart, I want you to fight against those things. So, point number two is we have a war going on inside of us. And then Paul goes on, and he says, um, he tells us what fleshly living looks like, and he gives us this list in verses 19 through 22. I'm not going to read those again. And he says that that the uh works of the flesh are fairly evident, and we know they are. We know, we know in our own hearts. But Paul gives us this list, and it's not comprehensive, it's not a comprehensive, but it's pretty encompassing. And um, he lifts such things as he lists sexual sins, he lists idolatry, he lists sins of strife and sins of overindulgence. And uh really, we're not going to go through them because they're self-explanatory, but I do want to address one thing about this. I think we understand the flesh pretty well. Yeah. But um anyway, but I do want to address one thing, and that is in the last half of verse 21, because I think some people might stumble over this. And that's where it says, um, I warn you as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. What Paul is talking about here, and most commentators believe that when he says, I warn you as I warn you before, that um he had probably warned the the um um m people of the Galatian churches about this when they became believers. Remember, they were pagan Gentiles who had become believers. They had lived life full of um just debauchery and they had false gods. And and Paul had probably said to them at that time, you can't continue living like that. That's not who you are now. You can't continue to live that way. And so what Paul is saying here is he's reminding them of that. He's reminding them that if that is going on, then they can't inherit the kingdom of God. Is Paul then saying that works can get you into the kingdom of God? That's not what he's saying. He's saying, in other words, he's saying, he's saying to them, if you live in the polluted stream and you're never led to live on the bridge, then and and there's no war going on in your life that the Holy Spirit isn't in your heart. He's saying, you can't do that. You can't do that. There has to be a war going on in your heart. You can't want to live in that polluted stream all the time. No, if that happens, you can't inherit the kingdom of God because the Holy Spirit isn't in you. Now, we all fall, I say this again, we all fall into the polluted river at times, but we do not live there. We hate being there. We have godly sorrow when we are there. We fight against it. That's the difference. That's what Paul is talking about. There's a a section, and we're going to talk about it a little next week, where Paul um talks about he uses two examples of fleshly living, and one of them is in verse 15, and where he talks about if you bite and devour one another. That is about that what we do. I mean, this is what happens, and it must be something that's going on in a chur in one of the churches or in all the churches in Galatia, is that there's there's a division, and what are they doing? They are they start out taking bites of one another, and then pretty soon that grows into bigger bites, and they begin devouring one another, and then pretty soon they're going to consume one another. And Paul says, No, that's fleshly living, that's not what you do. So we'll talk about that a little next week. But he's Paul is very practical in drawing pictures for us and showing us what our hearts are like. Okay, our final point is this. If all the okay, we've we've looked at all of that, so now we want to know what living in the spirit is like. What does that look like? What we've talked about up until now has been pretty devastating, but there's good news. And the good news is this there is a war going on in our hearts, and that's good news. And the the fact is, the better news is that the Holy Spirit is going to win that war. So we ask, how shall we then live? How shall we live in the Spirit? How do we stay on the bridge? Okay, so Paul gives us several examples, and I mean several um indications of how we do this in this passage. He says, walk by the Spirit, be led by the Spirit, and if we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. And then Paul gives us something else. He tells us some more wonderful news here. He says, our hearts are changing. He says that that we are beginning to take on a whole new character. Not like our old character, we're beginning to change. Because you see what happened. When the Holy Spirit came into our life, the Holy Spirit planted a seed. And that seed is growing into this wonderful fruit, the fruit of the Spirit. And the fruit that is going to grow in us is going to change us from the inside out. We will grow in love and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self-control. But the way that fruit grows is it grows as we walk by the Spirit, day by day, moment by moment. That's how that fruit grows. So let's say, okay, well then, what does that begin to look like? Well, obviously we could spend I don't know how many weeks we could spend on the Holy Spirit because there's so much to say about it. But what we're going to talk about this morning, it's not gonna we're not gonna talk about four steps to doing what the Holy Spirit tells us to do. What we're talking about this morning is this broad picture of what it looks like to live in the Spirit. I think we can say it's more what we're doing is more like we're we're drawing a blueprint of what the Holy Spirit's uh work in our hearts is. And then next week what we're going to do is we're going to use that blueprint to begin the process of building on it so that we begin to see what our life, living out of the spirit, looks like in the warp and woof of our lives. So that's what will happen. But today we're going to get the big picture of what it looks like. So just quickly, there there are a couple of things we're going to talk about. The f the most important thing, I want you to listen carefully because we lose this sometimes. The most important thing, the highest mem ministry of the Holy Spirit is to glorify Jesus Christ. That is the main ministry of what the Holy Spirit has come to do. This is what Jesus said. He said, I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away. For if I do not go away, the helper will not come to you. Jesus is saying here, it's better that I go to heaven. That's better for you. You know why that is? It's because Jesus took on flesh. The Holy Spirit comes, he can dwell in every one of our hearts. And Jesus says, that's to your advantage. That's a beautiful gift. That's wonderful. And so he said, and when the Holy Spirit comes to you, he will guide you into all truth. For he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears, he will speak, and he will declare to you the things to come. And then Jesus says, He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine, and he will declare it to you. The first thing that we have to understand is that the Holy Spirit's main purpose is to glorify Jesus Christ. We're going to see how that works out in our own lives. Okay, so what we want to know then, okay, if that's the Holy Spirit's main purpose, how do we participate in that purpose? And the first thing Paul says is this he says, But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. The way to walk with the Spirit in fighting in this war of being in Christ and not falling prey to the desires of the flesh is to walk by the Spirit. The word walk here means, this is what it means, it means a continuous, habitual moving forward. Letting your conduct be guided by the Spirit continuously. Don't take your eyes off of it. Ordering our lives according to the direction and the motion of the Holy Spirit. And Paul says, if you do that, then you won't gratify the desires of the flesh. So, with our overall grid that we're working with this morning, as the perb the Holy Spirit wants us to see Jesus, he wants us to glorify him, he wants us to walk in the freedom that Jesus has won for us, to live as who we are more and more each day. That's what the Holy Spirit is trying to do. He is trying to get us to live in the freedom Jesus has won for us. He wants us to turn from freshly, fleshly living, because that is not who Christ is making us to be. That is not what he died for. And the Holy Spirit wants us to walk in love. That's what the Holy Spirit wants us to. He wants us to walk in love for Christ and thus in love for others. The Spirit pours the love of Christ into our hands that we might bring that same love to bear. My purpose to glorify Jesus Christ is to love you. Your purpose to glorify Jesus Christ is to love not just me, but everyone. That is our purpose. That's what the Holy Spirit is trying to do. Not that we would live in fleshly living of self-indulgence, no, so that we would live in the love that Jesus Christ has spread abroad in our hearts. That's the first thing. The second thing Paul says is in verse 18, and he says, If you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. So here's what Paul is meaning. The word led is what we need to understand. And we've run into that word before. We ran into it in Galatians 3.24. The word is the word pedagogue. Remember when Krissan talked about that, and she said the law is it's a military term and it's like a military guard, and she said that the law, that it was like a drill sergeant. And that would be right because the Holy because the law is accusing and condemning, and it seeks to call us guilty at every point. But the word when used of the Holy Spirit is different because the Holy Spirit isn't condemning, the Holy Spirit isn't accusing, the Holy Spirit is guiding and protecting and leading and fighting for us. The Holy Spirit is teaching us how to live as who we are in Christ. The Holy Spirit is guarding our hearts and our minds, and that's why it's the same word, it just works out different. The Spirit is freeing us from the law of condemnation and working into us the law of love. It's you see, the difference is the law that condemned us was that cold law. It was that thing from outside of us that could only condemn. But what happened when Jesus came? Jesus perfectly fulfilled the law, and what did it look like in his life? It was beautiful. It was fulfilling the law, but it was beyond the law. J.I. Packer says this love looks not away from but beyond rules and principles to persons and it seeks their welfare and their glory. That's what happened when Jesus came. It wasn't that Jesus ignored the law, he kept the law, but he looked beyond the law and said, the law tells me I must love people. The law tells me that what I am supposed to do is to love others. And that's what the Holy Spirit is trying to work in our hearts. We aren't under the law anymore because we're under the law of love. And that's what we the Holy Spirit is trying to teach us. It's so beautiful that Paul says there is no against such thing, there is no law. And so what begins to happen? We go again to the fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit begins to take root, and we begin to become like that. And in this passage, Paul says, he makes this this um this, I guess we might say, understatement, and he said, as there's no law against the fruit of the spirit. There could be not how could there be a law against the fruit of the spirit? How could there be a law against love and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and gentleness and faithfulness and self-control? How could there be? How could there be a law against that? No. The law of the of developing the fruit of the spirit is that it would grow more bountiful in our lives. Okay. Then the final thing that Paul says, and we're about to finish, um, he said about spirit living is this. He says, if we live by the spirit, let us also walk by the spirit. And I think a better translation of that is that if we live by the spirit, let us also keep in step with the spirit. Again, it's another military term which means follow orders. If we keep in step with him, we don't fall off the bridge on either side. It's that conscious awareness of the Holy Spirit in our lives that he really does live there, and we keep in step with him. That we aren't like those who were in that room uh in the upper room before the Spirit came. No, we live in the reality that he is in our hearts, that there is a power working in our hearts, and that we need to listen to the Holy Spirit. So, what are some of the ways we do that? Here's some very practical ways that we keep in step with the Spirit. It's through reading Scripture and allowing the Holy Spirit to impress those truths upon our hearts. It's allowing the Holy Spirit not only to tell us the beautiful things about Jesus, and it's also about allowing the Holy Spirit to convict our hearts of sin. What else? It's also that we keep in step through prayer because that makes us see our need every day of the work of the Holy Spirit in our heart. We keep in step as we worship together because it focuses our attention on something other than ourselves. It lifts our eyes upward and we do it in community. So we do that holding one another's hands. We keep in step with the Spirit by sharing the gospel of truth with each other. We keep in step with the Spirit by crucifying the flesh. We must, my friends, we must when we feel these fleshly things going on, we must learn to crucify them. That's what Paul tells us. And we keep in step with the Spirit by rehearsing all of the fullness of what Christ has done. And as our little book says, of of reminding ourselves that God loves us, that we are his children. Okay. There are many more ways, but um, I think that gives us something to hold on to, and I have to stop here. There's so much more that we could say, but let me close this way. Life in the Spirit means the Spirit's purpose is to make you a trophy of God's grace. To do that, we must crucify the flesh and live in the spirit, growing in the fruit of the spirit and letting it work its way out in love toward others, so that when they see us, they look beyond us and see our Lord Jesus Christ. That's what our reading in the Jesus storybook showed us. Um when the Spirit came, what'd they do? They threw open the shutters, they unlocked the door, and they surged out into life. They were set free from their fears and they began to love others. They began to pour their lives into the lives of others. They began to tell others about Jesus Christ, about that never stopping, never giving up, unbreaking, always and forever love of Jesus. Let's pray.